The Fate of Jews

Nathan GanapathiOctober 31, 2018

A forceful speech prompted the cold-blooded holocaust

Before the vicious holocaust that eliminated thousands of Jews, the Jewish population in Europe was over nine million. This was way back in 1933. However, in 1945, the Nazi Germans, together with their collaborators, set action to annihilate European Jews as part of the Final Solution. A powerful speech by Adolf Hitler was said to have prompted this inhumane catastrophe. This was the Reichstag speech in January 30, 1939. Hitler’s theory sparked the minds of the Nazis to order anti-Jewish actions.

Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! (Hitler, 1939)

Führer Adolf Hitler had made countless impressive speeches. He is one of the many orators who charmed their way to persuading people through their gift of speech. The line above was part of one of Hitler’s famous speeches that allegedly reflect his intention of annihilating Jews in Europe.

The 1939 speech by Hitler does not specifically foretell the holocaust. There was no mention of the Jewish community and their annihilation until the line above which was spoken. The speech mostly contains the victory of the Nazi party and their glorious history. However, this powerful statement roused the Nazi Germans to get rid of Jews though not by killing them (the Final Solution was not fully put to action until 1941). The Germans were rather hopeful to get rid of Jews by ways of emigration. For some time, Hitler and Nazi leaders thought of relocating the Jews. Madagascar and the Arctic Circle were two of the places suggested for relocation. The Nazis started their campaign by ordering anti-Jewish boycotts, book burnings, and anti-Jewish legislations.

The restrictions and laws against Jews affected the European Jewish society. The hardships of that time were recorded in a diary of a Jewish man named Victor Klemperer. Klemperer was from Dresden in eastern Germany and was forced to quit his job as a professor before World War II for being a Jew.

Even though the existence of the diary was a great risk to his life, he kept record the restrictions implemented by Nazis that choked their daily lives. In the list, Jews were banned from using devices for communication like radios and phones. They were also banned from purchasing any source of entertainment and transport vehicles. Everything they once owned and consumed, from food to their source of learning, were banned and controlled. Even their homes were not enough protection from the cruelty. Though they weren’t locked up, they were prisoners and continued to suffer every single day.

The Final Solution

There was no account on when Hitler settled on the slaughter of the Jews, but the massacre of the European Jews was put to action by spring in 1941. The annihilation of the race they deemed inferior was termed Final Solution.

Other than the approximately 1.25 million Jews that were slain, the Nazis eliminated thousands of victims that they categorized as lesser people. These included 200,000 Roma or gypsies. The Euthanasia Program also killed at least 200,000 patients living in institutions, mainly Germans, who were mentally ill and physically disabled.

There may not have been written accounts that Adolf Hitler ordered the holocaust (there are still debates on this matter), but the speech he gave on January 30, 1939, held a large responsibility in bringing forth the racial massacre. This shows how powerful words are and how gifted of an orator Adolf Hitler was.

What do you think about Adolf Hitler’s Reichstag speech? Share your thought in the comment box below. Or I can personally hear them out by connecting with me through Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. To know more on remarkable speeches by Adolf Hitler, grab a copy of my book, Hitler’s Greatest Speeches.